National e-commerce policy to lay down terms for treatment of non-personal, commercial data

The new e-commerce policy being drafted by the government is likely to lay down how non-personal data such as commercial data held by e-commerce companies, anonymised data and community data are to be treated in terms of their location and processing.

“We have started stakeholder consultations on how to treat non-personal data. It is a highly sensitive matter as different stakeholders have different views on it. For instance, Nasscom has its set of opinions, while industry body CII has its own views. There are also various studies done on the subject. All these will be examined one by one,” Guruprasad Mohapatra, Secretary, Department of Policy for Industry and Internal Trade told BusinessLine.

The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), while working on the Personal Data Bill, had made a separate committee comprising IT experts and officials from key Ministries to look at whether there should be a free flow of non-personal and anonymised data across borders or it should be localised.